What to watch for
After a brief locker room celebration and media session, Michigan players returned courtside following Friday night's win over Tennessee.

Sitting in the Lucas Oil Stadium stands, they watched the first half of Louisville versus Kentucky to catch a glimpse of their next NCAA tournament opponent.

In a wild scene of two rivals slugging it out in the Sweet 16, the U-M players found their attention drifting elsewhere.

"Kentucky fans, they're intense, man," Spike Albrecht said Saturday. "That was a great crowd. That's what college basketball is all about."

And tonight all those Kentucky fans -- those blue-clad, C-A-T-S-chanting, commonwealth-loving fans -- will bring their fury back to Lucas Oil Stadium. If anything, there will be more of them. And this time, Michigan will be on the other side of it in the Elite Eight.

"I would expect that they'll have a lot of fans here," Albrecht said. "It'll be a lot of fun, but they're going to come out with a lot of energy and we need to match that energy."

The sophomore point guard noted that in last year's 87-85 win over top-seeded Kansas in the Round of 16, a crowd of 42,639 at Cowboys Stadium in Texas was predominantly for the Jayhawks.

"Until we got the run going and all the Michigan fans got into it because we were coming back, for a large portion of the game, it felt like we were on the road," Albrecht said.